sith_happened | The Danger Shop [Thursday morning]

Fortunately for pretty much everyone, Zack tended to have a very small knack for dismemberment. That really didn't stop him from swinging around a four-foot broadsword as though looking to cleave a bus in half, or anything.

Which was why the danger shop was a nice, safe alternative to actually going all-out while sparring the majority of his peers around here.

He was grinning as he peered into the Danger Shop, and bouncing as he waved hello to Anakin.

"Good morning!"

"Morning," Anakin said, inclining his head and pressing a button. The Danger Shop shifted around them to a cityscape that Anakin had based vaguely on Coruscant. "Will this work?" he asked. "There will be people to dodge, civilians to watch out for, and droids trying to kill you."

And giant precipices to plunge to your death from. It was kind of a thing back home.

Gaia had giant precipices, too! Usually, they amounted to a plummet into green radioactive death goo that just happened to be the source of all life on the planet.

"This looks awesome," Zack decided, giving a low whistle as he put his hands on his hips and looked around. "Big city, full of people, killer robots. It's almost homey, really."

Anakin snorted. "Good to hear," he said. "Very well. I'll let you get used to the environment, and then start switching things up. Gravity, weather phenomena, oxygen levels."

Out of control landspeeders...Anakin never understood the idea of playing fair.

Playing fair was hugely overrated.

"Bring it on!" Zack grinned, reached for the Danger Shop-supplied sword at his back, and then gave his head another firm nod before heading into the fray at a run.

... Zack possibly had zero sense of self-preservation.

And around a corner came ten droids, armed to the teeth.

If droids had teeth.

Which they didn't.

Only guns. They had lots of guns, and they were firing them all at Zack.

To his credit, Anakin did not laugh fiendishly.

Anakin didn't, but Zack very well might have, continuing his run right into the thick of them undeterred. Any blast that wasn't going to hit went completely unnoticed. Any that would were either avoided or deflected with his sword.

He went into a roll to avoid the worst of it, and by the time he was on his feet again, he was swinging outward with steel to smack around those droids some.

There was a clatter of droid parts on the permacrete as they fell apart.

Anakin made a slight adjustment to the programming.

The next group wouldn't be quite as killable.

Not quite as killable was just fine by Zack. There was only so much you could learn by smacking around one-hits, after all. Real experience came from throttling enemies that constituted a challenge.

Which would be why, even if these ones took a little more doing, Zack was totally enjoying every minute of this, yes. It was going to take far rougher to wipe the smile from his face.

How about if the gravity reversed, then?

Now Anakin looked a little fiendish, yes.

Oop, feet not on the ground!

Zack's smile wavered for a moment at that, yes, just because he was busy trying to figure out which way was currently up. That was a tiny bit on the jarring side, and he found himself reaching out to grab hold of whatever happened to be closest and still stationary.

"Okaaaay..."

... Right, there were still droids out there, weren't there? Well, this was about to get interesting.

And because Anakin was a bastard, they'd stayed firmly on the ground and were now tracking Zack's movements.

Yes, with their weapons. Which were being fired.

Rapidly.

Mean! Mean and awesome!

Zack would get over it.

He scrabbled about to try to get a foothold on the wall that he was using to keep from drifting away, hauling butt along the side of it as best as he could to avoid getting hit by the blasts. It was a bit like being on a rock-wall facing the ceiling, he noted, and was going to use that to his advantage the moment he could get himself turned around.

The bottom of something that Zack was going to have to assume was a balcony meant that he could stand up--down?-- straight and focus on deflecting a few more shots before he jumped up--down, whichever-- toward the droids on the ground. Launching himself far enough to do some damage wasn't going to be the hard part, really.

The hard part was figuring out where to land once the weird gravity snatched him up again after he lashed out at the droids he could reach.

Most of the droids started firing more slowly--getting shot by your own ammunition would do that to you--but they were also calling in for backup.

And Anakin then flipped the gravity back.

And doubled its strength.

And added a heavy wind.

Aaaand that would be Zack, making a spectacular landing on his face and then tumbling a few feet as the wind kicked up. Okay, that, he hadn't been expecting. He'd have to make a note of that kind of thing for future reference.

Note to self: Faces are not for landing on.

Double the gravity meant he was pulling double the Zack to his feet, and then hauling a significantly heavier sword up to swing around, on top of that. Which wasn't impossible, his SOLDIER enhancements saw to that, but it was going to slow him down a little. At the very least, he could use the wind to his advantage to help push him toward the droids in one direction while getting some distance between himself and the droids in the other.

A heavier sword meant not nearly as much manoeuvrability, but he could throw that much more power into the swing as he hefted it up to smash into the droid nearest to him.

He was going to get shot. That was going to suck. But he could take a lot of punishment before going down for the count, he figured.

Anakin smiled to himself and let the simulation continue to play out. If it ended up killing Zack, they'd start over.

That was the nice thing about working in a face environment. It was much messier to bring people back from the dead in the real world.

He managed to make it into the thick of the droids that the wind was blowing him toward, and while his legs and shoulders were starting to protest to the strain of keeping himself upright and active, Zack wasn't about to let up, either.

... Which meant that he managed to do some serious damage, which he was pretty darn proud of considering this was his first run through this particular sort of simulation, before he was peppered with enough blaster shots from behind to make him vaguely resemble smoldering swiss cheese.

Dead, Zack. Very dead.

The program faded to black and Anakin grinned over at him. "Again?"

"That was awesome!" Zack bounced back to his feet, dusting himself off before he grinned and nodded over to Anakin. "Well, I mean, except for the dying part. I have to work on that. But the rest? The rest was so cool!"

Bounce. Bounce. Ad infinitum.

"Any pointers before I try again?"

"Don't get shot this time," Anakin said dryly. "But other than that, you react very well to changing conditions."

"Don't get shot," Zack echoed, laughing a little and rubbing the back of his head with one hand. "As good advice as any I'm going to get, really."

It was! His mentor back home would have told him to focus, which was pretty much the same but without the useful memo that getting himself killed was a bad plan.

He took a deep breath, shook himself out a little while he adjusted to his limbs not feeling like they were made of lead, and then nodded.

"I'm ready for another round when you are, Master Skywalker."

Anakin smiled and restarted the program. This time gravity was about 80 percent of normal, so there would be a distinct bounce to Zack's step. The droids were the smarter, more armored type.

And now they were moving faster.

Evil, Anakin.

The combination of fast droids and a decidedly more bouncy Zack than usual was definitely an interesting one. But hey, after weighing twice as much as usual just a few minutes before, he'd totally take this combination!

He'd hack at this one, and then kick at that one to get some distance, and then he'd jump.

... A little higher than he'd intended to. At normal gravity, he could jump twice his body height from a standstill ~~because he was such a GaryStu~~. With gravity dialed down a little, he found himself having to flip in mid-air to avoid smacking his head on things.

At least it gave him extra time to figure out what he'd do once he landed again. Aside from cleaving his sword down into the top of the nearest droid to him as he approached the ground.

Anakin smiled.

And then made it hail.

A hailstone smacked against Zack's hand, causing him to blink and kind of stare for a split moment before the droids around him forced him to keep moving. And then another hailstone hit him, on the arm. And another, right between the eyes. And then many, many more.

"Hail?" Yes, Zack. Hail.

He didn't really have the time to dwell on it too much, considering he was all but surrounded. The hail was little more than a slightly stinging inconvenience so long as he was being shot at.

The slickness of the ground was a little bit more of an inconvenience, of course. Between the crunch of ice underfoot and the water from the melting hailstones, Zack was pretty much forced to go on the defensive in one place to keep from landing on his rear.

On the upside, at least his sword was still nice and light!

Edited 2009-08-27 21:48 (UTC)

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